S.A. activists call on Texas to drop suit

Erica Wadzinski, right, and other workers for Mi Familia Vota-San Antonio and Service Employees International Union, conduct a phone bank to urge Governor Greg Abbot and Attorney General Ken Paxton to drop legal action against the President's immigrant plan. April 17, 2015. less

Erica Wadzinski, right, and other workers for Mi Familia Vota-San Antonio and Service Employees International Union, conduct a phone bank to urge Governor Greg Abbot and Attorney General Ken Paxton to drop ... more

Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

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Erica Wadzinski, right, and other workers for Mi Familia Vota-San Antonio and Service Employees International Union, conduct a phone bank to urge Governor Greg Abbot and Attorney General Ken Paxton to drop legal action against the President's immigrant plan. April 17, 2015. less

Erica Wadzinski, right, and other workers for Mi Familia Vota-San Antonio and Service Employees International Union, conduct a phone bank to urge Governor Greg Abbot and Attorney General Ken Paxton to drop ... more

Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

S.A. activists call on Texas to drop suit

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While lawyers in New Orleans tried to sway a panel of judges over the fate of the president’s immigration policy, activists in San Antonio tried to convince Texas leaders Friday to drop their lawsuit.

About a dozen people gathered at the Cisneros Center for New Americans on West Commerce to call the offices of Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton. They asked them to abandon the lawsuit challenging President Obama’s executive action that would grant work permits to some young immigrants here illegally and millions of parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.

Citing a failed challenge to Obama’s 2012 policy, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that first granted work permits to young immigrants, Selene Gomez, a spokeswoman for Mi Familia Vota, said Texas is “wasting taxpayers’ money” by challenging the program’s expansion.

“It’s happened before, and it’s pretty much a political game that affects 5 million people,” Gomez said.

Luis Morales, 33, said he came to the U.S. from Piedras Negras, Mexico, 20 years ago. He’s not here legally and was too old to apply for the original deferred action program. When Obama announced in November the expanded deferred action programs, Morales said he was excited to learn that he’d be eligible for two of them, one that offers work permits to the parents of U.S. citizens — his son’s a citizen — and an expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that made eligible older immigrants who came here when they were young.

In February, a federal judge in Brownsville temporarily blocked the program. Now, Morales is waiting to learn if he’ll be able to apply. He was at the phone bank Friday and spoke to the activists gathered there.

“I want to work legally, so my son has a better future,” Morales said.

Paxton, who’s said repeatedly that Texas will incur costs if the U.S. grants work permits to millions of immigrants around the country and has accused government attorneys of misleading a federal judge about when the program started, didn’t give any indication he’d be willing to drop the lawsuit.

“The executive branch is bound by our legal system and U.S. Constitution - it cannot simply create new laws unilaterally,” Paxton said in a statement. “The Obama Administration defied this foundational principle when it bypassed our elected leaders to re-write national immigration policy, granting federal and state benefits to law-breaking immigrants, and when it misled a federal judge over the premature implementation of executive amnesty.”